Design
Innovative design makes Black Ice a very cool product.
From personal cooling bandanas to personal misters and fan collars, there are hundreds of personal cooling products on the market. Millions of dollars have been spent on these products, so when Black Ice set out to understand the personal cooling product market, imagine our surprise when we found there were really no products that met the four simple criteria we had developed for a properly designed personal cooling system:
Cool
Comfortable
Convenient to use
Cost effective
Our research did determine that some products met a couple of the criteria (cooling bandanas are convenient to use and rather inexpensive–but they provide little actual cooling, cool suits are very effective and comfortable–but they are hardly inexpensive or convenient to use, etc.), but it was particularly tough to find a personal cooling system that met them all–In fact, we didn’t find a single personal cooling system that was cool, comfortable, convenient to use and cost effective.
In the early stages of personal cooling product research and development, we quickly learned why so few personal cooling products actually work–physics. It’s simply very difficult to safely and comfortably cool a mobile human being for an extended period of time. In an attempt to create a cheap personal cooling product, hundreds of companies have designed bandanas, wet vests and caps–and all kinds of electrical contraptions–but anybody who has ever tried any of these personal cooling products knows they just can’t take the heat. Why? Because you just can’t get around the physics–these products all work by evaporation–and it simply takes more than still hot air to effectively cool a human body.
Then there are the personal cooling products that owe their lives to the ice age. These products all use either ice or some sort of frozen gel. Unfortunately, ice and gels are so cold that these personal cooling products must be designed utilizing some form of insulating barrier to keep the ice or gel from exposing your skin to frostbite. That’s not the best starting point for a product that is to be designed to help keep somebody cool.
There are expensive options as well–like cool suits and PCM (Phase Change Material) vests–but these products are very expensive, and they have other undesirable traits–cool suits require an umbilical cord linked to a complex heat exchanger and PCM vests are heavy, bulky and cumbersome to wear.
So you can’t rely on evaporation to keep a person cool for any length of time–and you certainly can’t rely on ice or gels. You don’t want your customer tied (literally) to a big box of ice or make them carry around an extra seven or eight pounds. So, if you want to be in the business of helping people keep cool in the dead of summer, what the heck are you supposed to do?
If you’re Black Ice, you go out and develop the personal cooling technology yourself.
By combining some of the positive traits of existing personal cooling products, and adding a little “black magic” of our own, Black Ice developed the Cool Collar CCX–a personal cooling system that’s cool, comfortable, convenient to use and cost effective.
Designed from the ground up to be the coolest solution for personal cooling, the Black Ice Cool Collar CCX is so chock full of innovative features, it’s no wonder the U.S. Patent office granted it one Patent and is considering granting it another. So what makes the Black Ice Cool Collar CCX such a unique personal cooling product?
The Black Ice CPX Personal Cooling Pack™
With a 20 minute recharge time, up to 1.5 hours of cooling duration and a safe and refreshing 57°F temperature output, the Black Ice CPX is the heart of the coolest personal cooling system available. The CPX has been ergonomically designed to wrap comfortably around the back of your neck, and weighing barely over 8 oz., it has been specially designed to be lightweight and convenient to use. Thanks to the Smart Ice™ matrix contained within the non-latex urethane structure of the pack, the CPX produces a safely regulated 57°F temperature output–regardless of ambient temperature or humidity level.
The use of Smart Ice is a breakthrough in personal cooling technology, because it allows the CPX to be placed directly against the skin without the need for an insulating “ice barrier”–maximizing heat transfer and greatly increasing efficiency and comfort. Designed for ultra-quick pack swapping, the CPX works in conjunction with the Black Ice CoolSwap wrap to offer effective and refreshing 24/7 personal cooling.
Smart Ice™
The intelligent solution for safe and refreshing personal cooling, Smart Ice is a high tech molecular alloy with amazing thermal properties. By “factory programming” this material to produce a safely regulated 57°F temperature output, Black Ice has finally pulled the idea of personal cooling out of the ice age. By programming Smart Ice to produce a 57°F temperature output, Black Ice has eliminated the need for the protective barrier that is always required anytime ice or a frozen gel is applied to the skin. That means the Black Ice CPX can be safely placed directly upon the skin, and it means you get cool, refreshing relief from the heat with a cooling duration and efficiency no ice or gel-based personal cooling system can offer. Couple that with the lighting-quick recharge time Smart Ice offers, and it’s easy to see why the Black Ice Cool Collar CCX is the coolest personal cooling system available.
CoolSwap™ Wrap
With an ergonomic design that’s both lightweight (1 oz.) and extremely comfortable, the Black Ice CoolSwap wrap is an integral part of the Black Ice Cool Collar CCX personal cooling system. Whether you’re playing golf or tennis, or even engaged in something as rigorous as riding off-road motorcycles, the CoolSwap wrap is designed to allow full range of movement under even the most extreme of physical activities. Made of soft yet tough premium-grade neoprene, the CoolSwap wrap not only protects the Black Ice CPX from physical abuse, its high insulation factor provides additional protection from ambient conditions, maximizing efficiency.
CoolValve™
If you’ve ever tried a personal cooling product that used some sort of cool pack, you’ve no doubt noticed a glaring problem beyond the fact that there is an efficiency-robbing insulating barrier between your skin and the pack. That problem is the hotspot. A hotspot occurs because each individual is different, and we generate varying amounts of heat in various places on our body–like the neck. One person may generate more heat at the back of their neck while another generates more to one side. This means that each section of a cooling pack must absorb a varying amount of heat, which leads to one pack fully discharging before another. The result is a hotspot–where one section simply stops providing any cooling whatsoever.
Black Ice CoolValves eliminate hotspots while maximizing comfort and efficiency. By installing tiny valves between each pack section, Black Ice gives you the option of varying the relative amount of Smart Ice in each pack section. So, if you find that one of your pack sections seems to discharge faster than another, simply give the adjacent sections a firm but gentle squeeze. The CoolValves will open and slowly meter the Smart Ice matrix into the section (be careful not to force too much Smart Ice into any one section!). Once you have made your adjustments, immediately place the CPX Personal Cooling Pack in ice water. In only twenty minutes, your CPX will be recharged and custom-balanced to your individual cooling requirements. We call that DBC–Dynamically Balanced Cooling™, and it’s not just cool–It’s very cool.
Comfort
If there’s one thing a personal cooling system must provide, it’s comfort. If the personal cooling system you choose is heavy, bulky, cumbersome or just poorly designed, it’s not going to provide the relief you’re looking for. The Black Ice Cool Collar CCX personal cooling system has been ergonomically designed for extreme comfort using computer generated 3D modeling and extensive real world testing in environments as soft and comfortable as sleeping and as extreme and harsh as mountain biking and off-road motorcycling. The two-piece design is lightweight and simple to use, and the unique physical shape of both the CPX and CoolSwap wrap work together to deliver a stable platform capable of providing refreshing, 57°F cooling for hours on end. In fact, the Black Ice Cool Collar CCX personal cooling system is comfortable enough to wear as long as you need it–even if that means 24 hours a day, seven days a week.